State Department | Safe for Democracy

Talk for Democracy

Saving the State Department—A Conversation with Rob Morris

00:00 / 1:26:52

Hey folks,

This show’s coming to you on a Tuesday just because of that new job I mentioned and because Thanksgiving happened on a Sunday this year in Mexico. What I’d like to talk to you about now, though, is what’s going to happen to SFD over the next month or so. No big or particularly bad news. It’s just that I’ll be travelling through most of the month of December, and I don’t want to commit to having a show for you every Monday. What will happen is Patreon subscribers will get a news show both for November and December, and I’ve got a few ideas for shorts that will probably get done next month, so it won’t be totally dry.

The good news is that once I’m home visiting my folks in the US, I’ll be able to lay hands on some texts I haven’t been able to get here in Mexico, including the 10,000 Day War, which is probably the most thorough history of the entire Vietnam conflict out there. I’ll be reading the whole month and with any luck we’ll be hearing about the French misadventures in Indochina by January.

Continue reading Saving the State Department—A Conversation with Rob Morris →

Safe For Democracy

SFD Short—State

00:00 / 28:58

Hey Folks—

I’m back on track here in Mexico, finally in the same place long enough to get working on the regular. To that point, if anybody hasn’t seen the piece I put up at the Awl last week, it’s worth checking out.

Next up is an article that explores how Tom Clancy made the whole US dumb about terrorism. No lie.

Iran is coming, guys, and soon. I’m settled, outline’s happening right now, which means writing and recording is going down within the week. I’m excited to be moving again.

The next Patreon-exclusive news show is likewise about to come out, so check out the page. We’re doing way better over there than I would have expected, and it’s pretty obvious that I’d love for that growth to continue.

In other, worse, news, the world’s a big goddamn mess and that’s not changing anytime soon. My disaster of the week, because that’s pretty much the timeframe we’re going to have to start using, is what went down in Mexico City and Puebla and the communities in their respective states (where I was two days before). We’re looking at hundreds of dead and people aren’t even done digging the schools out yet.

Mexicans, typically, despite the damage, have taken things in style. This last quake actually took place on the very same day as the much-more-devastating quake in 1985 that wrecked Mexico City and that resulted in a lot of the better building practices that made last week’s quake less terrible. And, in fact, there was a national earthquake drill just a couple of hours before the real temblor: